As a big Forgotten Realms fan, I’m pretty excited about the November release of the Heroes of Faerûn and Adventures in Faerûn books. I don’t expect either to eclipse my gold standard, 3e’s Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, however, one of the Forgotten Realms Ultimate Bundle’s digital expansions, Netheril’s Fall, has my complete attention.
Teased as “a time-traveling adventure to a fallen empire,” this digital-exclusive product promises to bring players back in time to the age of Netheril, a mighty magocratic empire that ruled the lands of Faerûn a few millennia before the present time of the setting. This won’t be the first time that Dungeons & Dragons brings us back to that age of wonders: 1996’s How the Mighty Are Fallen was a 2e Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure that takes place during the last days of the Netheril empire. It… wasn’t very good. But it had tremendous promise, and Heroes of Faerûn and Adventures in Faerûn have a chance to make good on that history.
Designed to be used with the Netheril: Empire of Magic boxed campaign setting, How the Mighty Are Fallen had the ambition of dropping a group of player characters in the middle (or at least, very close to) one of the most cataclysmic, history-altering events in the existence of Toril: Karsus’s Folly.
Baldur’s Gate 3 players may have heard of this event, which took place in -339 of the Dalereckoning calendar. Karsus, the greatest wizard who ever lived (according to Karsus), decided to heal his shattered homeland. Devastated by decades of war against the monstrous phaerimm, the best solution was to wrest control of the Weave away from Mystryl and become the new God of Magic. To do so, he devised the first (and last) 12th-level spell ever, Karsus’s Avatar, which killed Mystryl and temporarily shut down all magic, including that which kept Netheril’s floating cities floating. And so, the mightiest empire in Toril’s history ended in one day.
In How the Mighty Are Fallen, the players (who can be either time-traveling adventurers or native Netherese) are given perhaps one of the coolest quests in the history of D&D: fetch Karsus the ingredients necessary for his mighty spell. These happen to be a Tarrasque’s pituitary gland and the gizzard of a gold dragon, so you know that the stakes are high. Unfortunately, the adventure itself is a bit of a mess.
Doing Karsus’s shopping isn’t the only quest available, as the book warns that “This adventure is not extraordinarily linear in nature.” That’s a misdirection if I’ve ever seen one. The story begins with a jeweler who tasks the party with recovering his dead wife Amanda’s body, and that simple task leads to meeting an army of orcs on the run, a brush with the phaerimm, and a lich amassing the biggest army of undead ever. The weirdest thing, in my opinion, is that the whole plot of helping Karsus with his spell is treated as a distraction in the book. It’s literally a side quest:
“Of course, talking a gold dragon out of its gizzard and asking the Tarrasque for its pituitary gland are not easy tasks. It’ll take more than a strong sword arm before the characters can get back on task to locate Amanda.”
Guys, don’t let the spell that almost ends the world distract you from the real task, finding Amanda’s body! Which, by the way, is simply a way to get the characters from their initial location to the castle of the lich, the big villain of the story. Railroading at its worst.
There’s so much wasted potential in this adventure. I’m aware this was meant to be a companion to the Netheril: Empire of Magic campaign setting, and there is only so much content that you can fit within 61 pages, but it still suffers from questionable design choices. It’s trying to do too much and too little at the same time. It wants to present an example of adventuring in the mighty age of Netheril, but it’s bogged down by uninteresting quests, the blandest villain ever, and a deus ex machina final twist (which also weirdly contrasts with the official history of Karsus’s Folly).
If you have played 5e’s Rime of the Frostmaiden, you know that, at the end of that campaign, there’s a chance for the characters to be blasted back in time and land in ancient Netheril. It’s a fascinating adventure hook, but one that requires adapting 2e’s Netheril material if you don’t want to craft your own, which is what led me to acquire How the Mighty Are Fallen (besides my unhealthy obsession with vintage D&D material). Unfortunately, this adventure is such a mess that the only thing I would salvage from it is the maps.
But why would you want to have an adventure in Netheril in the first place? Essentially, it’s pretty cool to play powerful characters in a high-level setting that’s overflowing with power, wonder, and all the things that a “regular” D&D campaign usually makes you work harder for, especially considering that the majority of 5e’s campaigns don’t get to the higher tiers of play (levels 11-16, “masters of the realms,” and 17-20, “masters of the world”). Sometimes, I want my fetch quest to involve a Tarrasque’s hormonal organ.
Younger players may get the appeal from Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, the short Critical Role campaign set in the Age of Arcanum, a time in Exandria’s past when mortals stretched the power of arcane magic to its limits and challenged the gods
According to the summary of Netheril’s Fall, the upcoming 5e book will describe both the flying cities of High Netheril and the ground settlements of Low Netheril, with city maps, gazetteers, and new monsters and magic items. It will allow players and DMs to set adventures “during iconic Netherese events,” which I suppose will include Karsus’s Folly. While I don’t buy digital products, I will make an exception for this one. I hope that the book will dedicate enough space to properly flesh out the world of ancient Netheril and provide a good resource for high-tier play, and not end up being disappointing like How the Mighty Are Fallen.
